[madisgram]

i'm bringing this topic up cause at least for me i find remembering where i came from is a good reminder. like the saying, "keeping it green".
for those in recovery you may want to share too.

my reflections to name a FEW:
waking up in the morning in full withdrawal racing downstairs to get enough alcohol in me to stave off the shakes.
sipping thru a straw the first drinks cause i couldn't hold the glass
not moving except to lift the glass till having enough drinks so i wouldn't heave-ho
totally reclusive cause i felt i needed to drink all day
throwing up the alcohol and remedy was to pour another drink
keeping tv on without any sound (???!!!)
not only not answering the phone but disconnecting it from the wall (???!!!)
no HOPE, DESPAIR
feeling like my being was a total void...emptiness
in order to do anything i had to be drinking
making sure i had more than enough alcohol...one bottle was not enough
writing a map to help me remember where all my bottles were thruout the house.
going to different liquor stores so clerks didn't know how often i purchased more alcohol
praying to be taken in my sleep.
and last and the biggest memory-feeling like i had lost my SOUL.

neg self talk is bad

[splitimage]

Madisgram - I share many of the same memories as you, but will add a few more.

Coming to on the floor of my apartment, not knowing if it was morning or night, blood everywhere and a broken nose.

Coming to, not able to figure out where all the blood in my bed had come from until I went into the living room and saw my pedal harp on the floor and realised I had a giant cut on my butt from one of the pedals.

And although it seemed funny at the time, in hindsight it wasn't, identifying all the pubs I wanted to drink in, in Dublin, prior to my trip and marking them on my tourist map so that I could figure out the most efficient route to hit everyone. Talk about a waste.

But most of all dying inside and knowing I was killing myself, and not knowing how to stop the cycle.

splitimage

scouting out the bottle shop a few days before a bender, somehow hoping I were not gonna actually do it again. feeling the nerves build and the following days are an emotional vacuum. my brain doing the rapid pyscho switchbacks of do it? or not do it? of why do it? to why not? and then it's done. The first box of beer I'm escorted to hospital by the cops. the heavy sedation and thats on a good night....the fights the lock ups the charges the court appearances the fines the threat of long term jail the not keeping the jobs..the verbal assassination of people I like and love....the bitterness, the starving but can't keep food down as my body purges and rejects the poison and by the 3rd week I calculate more than 6 litres of pure alcohol have passed through me....the self harm and the sharp things the blood the psych wards and the bandages and the pills and the other drugs the needles and the expense and the total social breakdown of self.....the complete loss of time and days are nights! the shaking...teeth grinding wetting the bed and crapping the pants and taking an hour to drink the first warm beer of the day and crap I've swallowed another cigarette butt I extinguished in it!.. and the trips back to the bottle shop and the hiding of empty bottles at first and then they are everywhere and anything money is translated into booze and anything worth anything is turned into money...the pain in the kidneys the pain in the head the pain in the arse the pain knowing it's gone when I hit the 6th drink...and then it's the 10th and then it's 20 and never I get the pain to go finally! the hallucinations and paranoia and doors are locked and phone is smashed and I'm suicidal and replaying horror after horror of everything horribly imaginable in my head....the position I was in inside the womb...I am now in...in the dark in the corner...just waiting

thats just a part of the alcohol experience...other substances for another time